The Provoked Wife

'Women must have frolics, you see, whatever they cost 'em'

London 1698Lord Rake and Colonel Bully are drinking the night away again. Their Ladyships and the maids are scheming and intriguing about love as usual, but nothing is quite what it seems. The French maid's real name is Thomas, and Sir John Brute is running around London in his wife's dress. Truly, Puritanism is out of fashion ...

Playwright and architect Sir John Vanbrugh's rollicking Restoration comedy, in a new updated, site specific and immersive version set in the glorious baroque surroundings of Kings Weston House, the great Bristol mansion that Vanbrugh himself designed.

300 years of What the Critics Said ...

1698 ...'The Provok'd Wife furnishes the Audience with a Drunken Atheistical Catch: 'Tis true this Song is afterwards said to be Full of Sin and Impudence. But why then was it made?'Jeremy Collier, A Short History of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage

1917 ...'I do not care for unexpurgated dialogue in the presence of women,'J. T. Grein, Sunday Times

2014 ...'This is a comedy, and a funny one at that. Despite being written over three hundred years ago, the humour is still entirely relatable, most likely due to a combination of Vanbrugh's witty writing and the eternal subject of love.'Rachel Seymour, York Vision